Supply chain shortages push Steam Deck out to February 2022
Valve has said in a blog post that the first shipments of Steam Deck are now set to begin in February next year.
"The launch of Steam Deck will be delayed by two months. We're sorry about this -- we did our best to work around the global supply chain issues, but due to material shortages, components aren't reaching our manufacturing facilities in time for us to meet our initial launch dates," the company said.
Valve said customers would keep their place in the reservation queue, but the window will shift back two months.
Announced in July, the Steam Deck is a portable, handheld PC that uses AMD silicon to run SteamOS 3.0, a new version of its OS based on Arch Linux, with KDE Plasma used for desktop mode. The Linux system will use its Proton compatibility layer to run games designed for Windows.
The Deck has three storage options: A base level of 64GB eMMC using PCIe Gen 2, and 256GB NVMe SSD and 512GB "high-speed" NVMe SDD that both use PCIe Gen 3. The storage level chosen determines the cost of the Deck, with unit retailing for $400, $530, and $650 respectively. There is also a microSD card slot to allow users to store games and have more storage.
The Deck is far from Valve's first attempt to push Steam OS, with the Linux-based Steam Machines falling flat when they appeared in 2015.